How do time shares work?

They are one of the biggest scams ever. Do NOT buy into one. I'm betting 90% of owners eventually regret their purchase.

I'm not going to explain why. That's why they invented the internet.

I never understood the appeal of paying in advance for a vacation you may never take and being tied to a single location.

Also, OP, doesn’t the fact that there’s an entire (apparently profitable) industry devoted to getting people out of these deals suggest to you that there’s an element of deceit in selling them?

My mom was suckered into one about 15 years ago. Think it cost her about $25k. It’s now paid off.

She was initially regretful, but now basically has a free hotel room whenever and wherever she travels. I’ve been able to use it a few times, too.

She still has to pay about $200 a year in “housekeeping credits” a year, though.

My partner has one, but it works for him.

He has a golfing addiction.

We live in a Northern state climate. He uses his three times throughout the Winter- over Thanksgiving, Christmas and in late Winter. I go with him one of those three times.

I still don't know how they work, but he does pay an annual fee.

[quote]She was initially regretful, but now basically has a free hotel room whenever and wherever she travels.

She owns a timeshare in every city on the planet?

R5 Maybe?

I suppose they might make sense if you have a large family and need a place that's apartment-like. But for a single person or a couple, the annual fees are often more than what you'd spend on a hotel room.

[quote] but now basically has a free hotel room whenever and wherever she travels. I

How does that work? Surely she must travel to a limited number of destinations and at limited availability?

In any case, is she had invested the $25,000 and the $200 per year over 15 years she could afford some pretty nice hotels.

Not very well.

I think the appeal of timeshares was that you could stay someplace that had a full kitchen and separate rooms for kids.

We have Airbnb for that now.

Don't do it. You have to pay fees for the rest of your life, and you can never cancel.

You can cancel by selling, but usually the timeshare company or whoever has the right of first refusal. They will give you an offer of about $1.

The fees can go up at any time without warning. It can be very hard to find an available unit to swap for in another location. Don’t believe the sales pitch. Run!

Who’s going to buy without the heavy sales pitch?

[quote]Is there a cheap way to do this?

No.

If timeshares were great, there wouldn't be tons of companies whose sole business is helping people get out of timeshares.

You get one when you go to a Trump rally along with your boxed lunch. I mean what would be the incentive otherwise?

My ex was dead set on buying a Disney timeshare and we did, at Aulani. Aulani was new at the time and the slimy Disney people actually wrote up the contract for a different property in Florida that was not selling well. I caught it in time. We had an infant and we used Aulani three times for a week each time, in a one bedroom “villa.” The last visit, in 2019, was not great. There had been no updates to the property and three of four elevators in our tower were out of service. It was “long in the tooth.” Annual fees are about $1200. When we divorced, I made sure he got saddled with it.

The best thing about Aulani is that lots of people, especially East Asians, are keen to stay there, so it was cheap and easy to “exchange” our yearly stay at Aulani for someplace else for nothing out of pocket. We stayed for a week each in Vienna, Tokyo, Paris, and Prague in years we didn’t go to Hawaii.

If — and you should talk to your financial advisor first — you buy, do so in the resale market and choose one that provides maximum flexibility in terms of banking points, exchanging with other properties (Google “RCI”), and low annual fees.

Is the idea that buying one of these things is somehow cheaper than just going where you want when you want?

Ye, and it’s an idea called BAD

R3 here.

She bought into the Wyndham “ownership” program. She doesn’t have one property she owns per se, but can stay at any Wyndham property she likes.

[quote]She doesn’t have one property she owns per se, but can stay at any Wyndham property she likes.

But only one week a year, right? It's not like you can just go somewhere every month.

[quote]I know absolutely nothing about it.

You're the ideal timeshare customer. They prey on people who won't read the fine print or do any research, and will be easily convinced this is some sort of great deal you're signing up for.

One of their big selling points is that you can deed it to someone in your will. Who would want to be burdened with that expense?

Don't Do It. My father's wife talked him into buying a bunch of these schemes. Later, he tried to pawn them off on us kids (for free!) by saying he felt bad he wouldn't be leaving us anything so he'd like to gift us these timeshares. He even tried to give one to friends of mine. I was the only one who took it and visited the resort in Cabo San Lucas, which was nice, but the $650 annual "maintenance" wasn't capped and who wants to vacation in the same place every year.

How do they work? They work making most people who buy one regret it as one of the biggest finalcial mistakes of their lives.

Instead of getting a timeshare, it's quicker and less humiliating to flush your money down the toilet instead.

It's sort of the same as owning a second home. I could afford it, and it would be nice to be able to get away from bad weather or whatever from time to time ... but the expense of maintaining a second home is ridiculous and ties you in to one place. I realized that it makes much more sense to just rent a place (e.g. on VRBO or the like) for a month. I've done it three times in three different parts of the world and it was great.

As you get older and drive less, it also makes sense to ditch your car and use Uber/Lyft/public transit for short trips, and rent a car when you need one. The cost savings are incredible.